“The interests there involved now seem pitifully trivial, but they often meant almost life and death to the litigants--the family cow--or the chattel mortgaged cook stove, or the month’s wages. And on just such occasions as these, when humor or pathos were so closely blended, Kern, at that time, was facile princeps among the lawyers of the county, though he was barely of age. I know the impression he made on me was that his client was always right and much wronged by the highly reprehensible persons on the other side.... I learned that his wonderful skill in marshaling the facts and circumstances, added to his real genius for pathos, ridicule and invective, when these weapons could be used to advantage, were often quite as much to be feared as the merits of his case. He knew when to employ these weapons and never made the mistake so frequently observed of resorting to either unless there was something in the case which made it certain he would ‘get away with it.’ He avoided the obvious resort to such expedients--indeed he never seemed to employ them at all. This is what made him so effective when he did use them.” That with all his precocity he was still essentially a boy during the early days of his practice is illustrated in a story affecting Rawson Vaile, a leader of the bar, who had been editor of the _Indianapolis Journal_ before the civil war. Mr. Vaile was a polished gentleman, an Amherst graduate, something of an exotic for the time and place, who bore himself with great dignity, dressed immaculately, and always wore a silk hat. One day in court--the court room crowded with Kern’s young followers--while the young lawyer was in the midst of an argument to the court, he observed on the table before him the silk tie of the opposing attorney. Simulating much excitement, he brought his clenched fist down upon Vaile’s cherished hat with such force as to mash it completely. The young men in the court room who knew that it was not accidental, but a carefully planned diversion for their benefit, roared their approval, and so great was the indignation of the court that but for the splendid acting of Kern in assuring the court of the accidental nature of the incident he would have been fined for contempt. In the little cases in the squire’s courts he fought as stubbornly as he ever did in later life in the federal courts of the country. One case--a suit in replevin over a red shawl--is still remembered because the tenacity of the boy lawyer cost the defendant $700 before the case was closed. Before he had been in practice a year, if he was not the ablest lawyer at the Howard bar, he was easily, among all the lawyers, the idol of the multitude. II